What Does It Mean

To Be a Muslim Today?

by Riffat Hissan

To be a Muslim
today--or any day--is to live in accordance with the will
and pleasure of Allah. Muslims often say, with joy and pride, that it is easy to
be a Muslim since Islam is "the straight path" leading to paradise.
What this means, in other words, is that the principles of Islam are simple
and straightforward, free of ambiguities, confusions, inconsistencies or
mysteries, and that comprehending them or living in accordance with them is not
difficult. The assumption here is that if one somehow comes to "the
straight path" by accepting Islam, which is Allah's last and final
revelation to humanity, one will fairly effortlessly arrive at the destination
which is a state of eternal blessedness in the presence of Allah. I must confess
that I am totally amazed, and overwhelmed, by this assumption. To me, being a
Muslim today--or any day--seems to be exceedingly hard, for to be a Muslim one
has constantly to face the challenge, first of knowing what Allah wills or
desires not only for humanity in general but also for oneself in particular, and
then of doing what one believes to be Allah's will and pleasure each moment of
one's life.

In view of the stereotyping of Islam and Muslims which has gone on in the
West for many centuries, and especially since the Arab oil embargo of 1973 and
the Iranian Revolution of 1979, it is necessary to state at the outset of this
article that "the world of Islam" is not a monolith and that Muslims
differ as sharply within their "ummah"1 of one billion
persons as do adherents of other major religious traditions within their own
respective communities. Therefore, my perception and understanding of Islamic
ideals and Muslim realities as presented here ought not to be taken as those
of Muslims in general. At the same time, from my encounters with many Muslims
in different parts of the world I believe that my response to the question
"What does it mean to be a Muslim today?" is grounded in an Islamic
perspective which is shared by a number of contemporary Muslims.

To be a Muslim means, first and foremost, to believe in Allah, who is
"Rabb al-'alamin": creator and sustainer of all peoples and
universes. The Qur'an, which to me is the primary source of normative Islam,
tells me that Allah's creation is "for just ends"2and
not in "idle sport."3Humanity, fashioned "in the
best of moulds,"4 has been created in order to serve Allah.5According to Qur'anic teaching, service of Allah cannot be separated
from service to humankind, or--in Islamic terms--believers in Allah must honor
both

"Haquq Allah" (rights of
Allah) and "Haquq al-'ibad" (rights of creatures). Fulfillment of
one's duties to Allah and humankind constitutes righteousness, as stated in
Surah 2: AL-Baqarah: 177, which reads as follows:

It is not righteousness

That ye turn your faces

Towards East or West;

But it is righteousness
To believe in God

And the Last Day,

And the Angels,

And the Book,

And the Messengers;

To spend of your substance,

Out of love of Him,

For your kin,

For orphans,

For the wayfarer,

For those who ask,

And for the ransom of slaves;

To be steadfast in prayer,

And practice regular charity;

To fulfill the contracts

Which ye have made;

And to be firm and patient,

In pain (or suffering)

And adversity,

And throughout

All periods of panic.

Such are the people

Of truth, the God-fearing.6

As I reflect upon the above passage, as well as many others in the Qur'an,
I am struck deeply by the integrated vision of the Qur'an, which does not
separate belief in Allah and Allah's revelation ("iman") from
righteous action ("'amal"), or regular remembrance of Allah ("salat")
from regular discharge of one's financial and moral obligations to Allah's
creatures ("zakat"). Thus, to be a Muslim means--in a fundamental
way--to be both Allah-conscious and creature-conscious, and to understand the
interconnectedness of all aspects of one's life, of the life of all creation and
of our life in this transient world to life eternal.

For Muslims, the Qur'anic notion of righteousness has been actualized
in the life of the Prophet Muhammad-- known in the Islamic mystic tradition as
"Insan al-kamil" or the complete human being. Through his
Allah-centeredness, the Prophet of Islam attained the highest degree of
"'ubudiyat" (service of Allah) and became a model of righteous
living not only as the spiritual and political leader of the Muslim "ummah",
but also as a businessman, citizen, husband, father, friend, and a human being
in general. Following him, there have been individual Muslims--recorded and
un­recorded--in
every age, who have known that being a Muslim means more than seeking or
worshiping Allah. The poet Iqbal speaks for them when he proclaims, "There
are many who love Allah and wander in the wilderness,/I will follow the one who
loves the persons made by Allah."7

Considering the emphasis placed upon the interrelatedness of "Haquq
Allah" and "Haquq al-'ibad" both in Qur'anic teaching and in the
life of the Prophet Muhammad, the exemplar par excellence of this teaching, it
is difficult to understand their compartmentalization in the minds and lives of
many present-day Muslims. But what has happened is not surprising given the fact
that many generations of Muslims have been told by their leaders that the
primary duty of a Muslim is to engage in "'ibadat"--which is
understood as "worship" rather than service of
Allah--and to obey those in authority over them rather than to engage in
"'jihad fi sabil Allah"8 to ensure that the fundamental
rights given to all creatures by Allah are honored within the Muslim "ummah."

The River of Tradition

For many contemporary Muslims, being a Muslim means following
the "Shari'ah" of Islam, as pointed out by the well-known Muslim
scholar, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, who says:

The Shari'ah is the Divine Law by virtue of accepting which
a person becomes a Muslim. Only he who accepts the injunctions of the Shari'ah
as binding upon him is a Muslim although he may not be able to realise all
of its teachings or follow all of its commands in life. The Shari'ah is the
ideal pattern for the individual's life and the Law which binds the Muslim
people into a single community. It is the embodiment of the Divine Will in
terms of specific teachings whose acceptance and application guarantees man a
harmonious life in this world and felicity in the hereafter . . . The Shari'ah
is Divine Law, in the sense that it is the concrete embodiment of the Divine
Will according to which man should live in both his private and social life.
In every religion Divine Will manifests itself in one way or another and the
moral and spiritual injunctions of each religion are of Divine origin. But in
Islam the embodiment of the Divine Will is not a set only of general teachings
but of concrete ones. Not only is man told to be charitable, humble or just,
but how to be so in particular instances of life. The Shari'ah contains the
injunctions of the Divine Will as applied to every situation in life. It is
the Law according to which God wants a Muslim to live . . . [It] is the blue
print of the ideal human life. It is a transcendent law which is at the same
time applied in human society, but never fully realised because of the
imperfections of all that is human. The Shari'ah corresponds to a reality that
transcends time and history. Rather, each generation in Muslim society should
seek to conform to its teachings and apply it anew to the conditions in which
it finds itself. The creative process in each generation is not to remake the
Law but to reform men and human society to conform to the Law.9

There is much in the above passage which is of crucial
significance for modern Muslims. However, before reflecting on this, it may be
useful to note that the term "Shari'ah" comes from the root "Shar'a",
which means "to open, to become clear." F. W. Lane points out in his
monumental Arabic-English Lexicon that, according to the authors of the
authoritative Arabic lexicons, the Taj Al- 'A rus, the Tadheeb, and
the Misbah, the Arabs do not apply the term "shari-at" to
"any but (a watering place) such as is permanent and apparent to the eye,
like the water of a river, not water from which one draws with the
well-rope."10A modern lexicon, Lughat ul Qur'an, states
that the term "Shari'ah" refers to a straight and clear path, and also
to a watering place where both humans and animals come to drink water provided
the source of water is a flowing
stream or river.11It is not a little ironic that the term "Shari'ah",
which has the idea of fluidity and mobility as part of its very structure,
should have become the symbol of rigid and unchanging laws to so many Muslims in
the world.

That the "Shari'ah" has played a pivotal role in
Islamic history as a means of bringing diverse groups of Muslims within a single
legal-religious framework, is beyond dispute. However, the assertion that one is
a Muslim only if one accepts the "Shari'ah" as binding upon oneself,
and, further, that the "Shari'ah" is divine, transcendent and eternal,
can be seriously questioned (and, in my judgment, ought to be).

Being a Muslim is dependent essentially only upon one belief:
belief in Allah, universal creator and sustainer who sends
revelation for the guidance of humanity. Believing in Allah and Allah's
revelation to and through the Prophet Muhammad, preserved in the Qur'an, is,
however, not identical with accepting the "Shari'ah" as binding upon
oneself. As Wilfred Cantwell Smith has remarked insightfully, "A true
Muslim ... is not a man who believes in Islam--especially Islam in history; but
one who believes in God and is committed to the revelation through His
Prophet,"12

Most Muslims regard the "Shari'ah" as a sort of
umbrella that stretches over the length and breadth (and perhaps even the depth)
of their lives and they feel secure under its cover. However, many of them do
not know about the sociological process whereby the "divine" "Shari'ah"
came to be codified. Seyyed Hossein Nasr describes the process briefly in the
following passage:

In essence all of the Shari'ah is contained in the
Qur'an.
The Holy Book, however, contains the principle of all the Law. It contains the
Law potentially but not actually and explicitly--at least not all the
different aspects of the Shari'ah. There was, therefore, a gradual process by
which this Law became promulgated in its external form and made applicable to
all domains of human life. This process was completed in about three centuries
during which the great books of law in both Sunni and Shi'ite Islam were
written, although the exact process is somewhat different in the two cases.
The principles of Law contained in the Qur'an were explained and amplified in
the prophetic Hadith and Sunnah which together constitute the
second basic source of Law. These in turn were understood with the aid
of the consensus of the Islamic community (ijma'). Finally, these
sources of Law were complemented by analogical reasoning (qiyas) where
necessary. According to the traditional Islamic view, therefore, the
sources of the Shari'ah are the Qur'an, Hadith, ijma' and qiyas, of
which the first two are the most important and are accepted by all
schools of law while the other two are either considered of lesser
importance or rejected by some of the schools.'13

It is to be noted that of the four sources of the
"Shari'ah" mentioned in the above passage, three are human,
and not divine, in origin, and that two "are either considered of
lesser importance or rejected by some of the schools." The author
has also accepted that while the Qur'an contains the Law
"potentially," it does not do so "actually and
explicitly, at least not all the different aspects of the Shari'ah."
What this means, in other words, is that while the Qur'an elucidates the
essentials of Islam, the details of the code of rules and regulations
pertaining to all aspects of a Muslim's life which is cumulatively
referred to as the "Shari'ah" cannot be regarded as divine--as
Seyyed Hossein Nasr and many others assert--since the Qur'an
categorically rules out the possibility of any human being (including
the Prophets, the Imams of the Shi'is and the great scholars of Islam)
being divine. Unless all of the "Shari'ah" can be shown
to be of nonhuman origin--as Muslims believe the Qur'an to be--the claim
that it is divine, transcendent, eternal or immutable cannot be
validated logically or theologically.

Not only are the majority of the sources of the
"Shari'ah" not divine in origin but they can also be regarded
as problematic in other ways. For instance, as every scholar of Islam
knows, Hadith literature, crucial as it is in the development of Islamic
law and even doctrine,14is surrounded by controversies
regarding all its aspects. In particular, the question of the
authenticity or otherwise of individual "ahadith"'5
as
well as of the Hadith literature as a whole has occupied the attention
of many scholars of Islam since the time of Ash-Shafi'i (died in A.H.
204/A.D. 809). Regardless of the fact pointed out by one of the most
important Muslim scholars of our times, Fazlur Rahman, namely, that
"a very large proportion of the Hadiths were judged to be spurious
and forged by classical Muslim scholars themselves,"16Muslims,
in general, continue to believe in the "sacred" character of
the Hadith literature. Furthermore, on the basis of a "hadith"
which states, "My Community will never unite in an error,"17they also continue to believe that "Ijma'" of the first three centuries of Islam (during which the four "Madhahib"
or Schools of Law accepted as equally "orthodox" by Sunni Islam were
established) is "protected from error," i.e., it is infallible,
hence binding upon Muslims of all times. The theological point made by some
modern Muslim thinkers and legal scholars that since infallibility belongs
only to Allah, the "Ijma'" of any place or period cannot be regarded
as infallible and hence eternally binding, is disregarded--even as the
scholarly criticism of the Hadith literature by Muslim scholars is
disregarded--by a large number of Muslims who believe that the preservation of
the "sacred" nature of the "Shari'ah" is essential for the
continuance and well-being of Islam.

Modernization without Westernization

In order to understand what amounts to a virtual
deification of the "Shari'ah" by many Muslims as well as the strong
impetus towards "Islamization" evident in a number of Muslim
societies in recent years, it is necessary to know that of all the challenges
confronting the contemporary Muslim world, the greatest appears to be that of
modernity. "Shari'ah"-minded Muslims who consider themselves the
caretakers of "the Islamic way of life" are aware of the fact that
viability in the modern technological age requires the adoption of the
scientific outlook, which inevitably brings about major changes in modes of
thinking and behavior. Unable to come to terms with modernity as a whole,
present day Muslim societies make a sharp distinction between two aspects of
it. The first--generally referred to as "modernization"--is largely
identified with science, technology and a better standard of life; the
second--generally referred to as "westernization"--is largely
identified with mass western culture and moral degeneration and
disintegration. While all Muslim societies of today desire modernization, most
of them reject westernization, which is associated not only with the
colonization of Muslim peoples by western powers in the not too distant past,
but also with what is perceived to be a continuing onslaught upon traditional
Islam by westerners as well as by westernized Muslims who want to apply modern
methods of scholarship or analysis to the study of Islam.

In strong and startling contrast to conservative Muslims
who are deeply fearful of any form of creative thinking which might liberate
Muslim masses from the straitjacket of traditionalism, is the refreshing voice
of Muhammad Iqbal, modern Islam's most outstanding thinker and visionary, who was a passionate advocate
for "Ijtihad"--the principle of independent reasoning--which he,
perceptively, called "the principle of movement in Islam." In
his lecture on "Ijtihad," Iqbal says:

I know the Elema18
of Islam claim
finality for the popular schools of Muslim Law, though they never
found it possible to deny the theoretical possibility of a complete
Ijtihad'19...
For fear of ... disintegration, the
conservative thinkers of Islam focused all their efforts on the one
point of preserving a uniform social life for the people by a jealous
exclusion of all innovations in the law of Shari'ah as expounded by
the early doctors of Islam. Their leading idea was social order, and
there is no doubt that they were partly right, because organisation
does to a certain extent counteract the forces of decay. But they did
not see, and our modem Ulema do not see, that the ultimate fate of a
people does not depend so much on organisation as on the worth and
power of individual men. In an over-organised society the individual
is altogether crushed out of existence 20 The closing of the door of
Ijfihad is pure fiction suggested partly by the crystallisation of
legal thought in Islam, and partly by that intellectual jaziness
which, especially in a period of spiritual decay, turns great thinkers
into idols. If some of the later doctors have upheld this fiction,
modern Islam is not bound by this voluntary surrender of intellectual
independence ... 21 Since things have changed and the world of Islam is
today confronted and affected by new forces set free by the
extraordinary development of human thought in all its directions, I
see no reason why this attitude (of the Ulema) should be maintained
any longer. Did the founders of our schools ever claim finality for
their reasonings and interpretations? Never. The claim of the present
generation of Muslim liberals to reinterpret the foundational legal
principles in the light of their own experience and altered conditions
of modern life is, in my opinion, perfectly justified. The teaching of
the Qur'an that life is a process of progressive creation necessitates
that each generation, guided but unhampered by the work of its
predecessors, should be permitted to solve its own problems.22

A Personal Commitment

To me being a Muslim today means taking a stand against
those who insist that being a Muslim means following the trodden path and
sanctifying tradition without subjecting it to serious reflection or scrutiny.
According to the Qur'an, Adam was elevated even above the celestial creatures
on account of his capability to "name" things, i.e., to form
concepts or to exercise the rational faculty.23 in one of the most
significant passages of the Qur'an,24we are told that Allah
offered the "trust" of freedom of will to all creation but only
humanity accepted it. What this says to me is that it is not only a right of Muslims, but also their
duty--and indeed
their glory--to think and to choose. As Iqbal has pointed out,25 freedom is a
precondition of goodness and a person who is totally determined (whether by
tradition or anything else) cannot produce goodness.

To me being a Muslim means knowing that the Qur'an is the
Magna Carta of human freedom and that a large part of its concern is to free
human beings from the bondage of traditionalism, authoritarianism (religious,
political, economic, or any other), tribalism, racism, sexism, slavery or
anything else that prohibits or inhibits human beings from actualizing the
Qur'anic vision of human destiny embodied in the classic proclamation:
"Towards Allah is thy limit."26
Though it is necessary to set limits to what human beings may or may not do so
that liberty does not degenerate into license, the Qur'an safeguards against
the possibility of dictatorship or despotism and states with clarity and
emphasis: "It is not right for a human being that Allah should give him
the Book of Law, power to judge and (even) Prophethood, and he should say to
his fellow-beings to obey his orders rather than those of Allah. He should
rather say: 'Be ye faithful servants of Allah by virtue of your constant
teaching of the Book and your constant study of it.'"27

To me being a Muslim today means carrying forward the
message of the Muslim modernists who have raised the cry "Back to the
Qur'an" (which, in effect, also means "Forward with the Qur'an")28
and insisted on the importance of Ijtihad--both at the collective level (in the
form of "Ijma"29) and at the individual level-as a means
of freeing Muslim thought from the dead weight of outmoded traditionalism. It
is a profound irony and tragedy that the Qur'an, despite its strong
affirmation of human equality and the need to do justice to all of Allah's
creatures, has been interpreted by many Muslims, both ancient and modern, as
sanctioning various forms of human inequality and even enslavement. For
instance, even though the Qur'an states clearly that man and woman were made
from the same source, at the same time, in the same manner, and that they
stand equal in the sight of Allah, men and women are extremely unequal in
virtually all Muslim societies, in which the superiority of men to women is
taken to be self-evident.30 To me a very important part of what it means to be
a Muslim today is to acquire the competence to develop a hermeneutics for
interpreting the Qur'an in such a way that its fundamental teachings, such as
those pertaining to human equality of justice, are separated from historical
and cultural accretions which-though they represent the biases or prejudices of specific Muslims or Muslim
societies--are taken by
the Muslim masses to be part of the Qur'anic message.

Living in the West, I am all too painfully aware of the fact
that westerners in general--including many Christians and Jews who, like Muslims,
are "People of the Book"--perceive Islam as a religion spread by the
sword, and Muslims as religious fanatics who are zealously committed to waging
"Holy War" against non-Muslims or even against non-conforming Muslims.
While it is beyond the scope of this article to examine the historical roots of
these perceptions, being a Muslim today means not turning away in hatred or
anger from those who regard Muslims as adversaries but engaging in dialogue with
them in a spirit of amity and goodwill.31Being a Muslim today means
paying serious heed to the Qur'anic teaching that Allah, universal creator and
sustainer, who cares for all and sends guidance to all, has decreed diversity
for a reason, as the following passage tells us: "O men! Behold! We have
created you out of a male and a female, and have made you into nations and
tribes, so that you might come to know one another. Verily the noblest of you in
the sight of God is the one who is most deeply conscious of Him. Behold, God is
all-knowing, all-aware."32 What this passage says to me is that we should be
mindful both of our unity and our diversity, that one of the basic purposes of
diversity is to encourage diverse groups and persons to know one another, that a
person's ultimate worth is determined not by what group he or she belongs to but
how Allah-conscious he or she is.

Being a Muslim today means taking serious note of the
Qur'anic imperative, "Let there be no compulsion in religion,"33"
knowing that the right to exercise free choice in matters of belief is
unambiguously endorsed by the Qur'an, which says: "The Truth is/From your
Lord:/ Let him who will/Believe, and let him/Who will, reject it."34Being
a Muslim today also means realizing that by merely professing Islam we do not
attain to Paradise, and that Muslims have no special claim upon Allah's grace,
for the Qur'an tells us:

Those who believe (in the Qur'an)
And those who follow the Jewish (scriptures),
And the Christians and the Sabians,
Any who believe in God
And the Last Day,
And work righteousness,
Shall have their reward
With the Lord; on them
Shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve.35

Finally, to me being a Muslim today--and
always--means being on
a journey, both external and internal, toward attaining a state of peace which
is the goal of Islam. However, peace is not merely the absence of conflict, even
as health is not merely the absence of sickness. According to the perspective of
the Qur'an, peace is a positive state of safety or security in which one is free
from anxiety and fear. It comes into being when human beings honoring the divine
imperative to live justly, learn to be just to themselves and to others.
Constant striving is required to overcome the fragmentation to which most human
beings are subjected in the technological age and also to eliminate sexism,
racism, classism, and all forms of totalitarianism which lead to the injustices
and inequities which characterize the world in which we live. To engage in such
striving (which the Qur'an calls 'jihad fi sabil Allah": striving in the
cause of Allah) is the purpose of a Muslim's life.

26 Reference here is to Surah 53: An-Najm: 42;
translation is by Iqbal (The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, p.57).

27 Reference here is to The Qur'an, Surah 3: AI-'Imran;
79.

28 In this context, the "double movement" outlined by
Faziur Rahman in his book Islam and Modernity: Transformation of an
Intellectual Tradition (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1982), pp.5-8
is important.

29 IqbaI's remarks about "Ijma" in modern
times, stated in The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, pp.
173-174, are thought-provoking.

RIFFAT
HASSAN is currently teaching in the
Religious Studies Program at the University
of Louisville in Kentucky. Her article originally appeared in the February 1990
issue of New Blackfriars (Blackfriars Oxford OX 1 3LY En­gland, $30 a
year), which was devoted to "The World of Islam."

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